Sunday, January 16, 2011

Cutting My Cable: pros, cons, economics

Despite being a software programmer I'm not much of an early adopter at home.  I didn't have a remotely smart phone until the second iPhone came out for instance.  However I recently got annoyed enough with Comcast, and cable companies in general really, to actually cut my cable and ditch my DVR and it's going pretty good so I wanted to share how I did it, some pros and cons and the economics if you're considering it.


My Setup


One caveat to this is that I don't get a good digital broadcast signal so I can't really employ an antenna and DVR.  Everything I watch has to come from online.

Basic Setup:
  • Hulu Plus: Has most shows you'd want to watch for $8/mo.

Content Add ons:
  • Amazon Video on Demand ($3/ep HD, $2/ep SD):
    • Has shows Hulu doesn't like Leverage and shows you can't get online for free at all like Mythbusters
    • Has HD versions of shows Hulu or the Internet only has the Standard Definition of.
  • The Internet:

Viewing Add ons:
  • Roku: Small $80 box that lets you stream content from Hulu Plus, Amazon and Netflix on your HD tv.
  • Laptop with HD out and a $8 DVI-to-HDMI cable: Lets you watch non-streamable content on your TV.

So basically Hulu Plus is serving most of the content you'll watch with Amazon as a backup when it doesn't have something.  Also Hulu Plus doesn't have most stuff in HD so if you really want something in HD you can go the Amazon route.

A newer laptop and a Roku box help put everything up on your HD TV.  The Roku is nice but only works for some Hulu content (see Cons section), where the laptop will play everything but ties up the laptop.

The pros, the cons, the money

Cons:

Let's start with the bad stuff,
  1. You lose convenience:

    By far the biggest downside is that everything isn't in one spot, and you have to see where the best place to get something is, or just remember that a new episode is available.

    Hulu let's you maintain a queue with email alerts, and Amazon let's you buy Season Passes, though you can't start mid season and only buy the remaining episodes.  However there's nothing to keep track of say the Daily Show for you which can only be watched on Comedy Central.

    With the laptop too you now have some cables laying around to deal with.

  2. Hulu Plus is very fragmented:

    The advantages to Hulu Plus are:
          A.  Access to some shows which aren't on regular Hulu
          B.  Access to previous seasons
          C.  Streaming to Roku, Tivo, PS3, and other devices
          D.  HD on more content

    The problem is that you don't necessarily get all of these.  You get at least 1, and sometimes all, but it is seemingly random which show has what and it's inconsistant by station too.

    The only pattern I've noticed is that HD and Streaming go together.  You either get both or neither.

  3. You won't get everything in HD:

    Unless you are willing to buy a lot on Amazon you're going to end up watching a good deal of stuff in Standard Definition.  For me this wasn't a big deal.  I get to pick what's worth the extra money so that's nice too.

  4. You'll still get ads:

    I don't care about this much myself but others do.  There are still going to be ads on Hulu Plus or a shows own website.  Some pluses are that the ads are usually only 30s long and Hulu has a limited Ad Tailor system so hopefully the ads are more relevant, as well you can say if some ads are relevant or not.

    Basically if you don't pay to watch a specific episode like on Amazon, you're going to get some ads.

  5. No Sports:

    I don't watch sports much but my understanding is it's hard to get them online, this seems to be why some people don't cancel.  I do know that Roku will let you stream an MLB.tv account though which should satisfy baseball fans.
Pros:

Ok now the good stuff.
  1. You have choice over what you pay to watch:

    The big problem with cable that I see is you have no choice in what you pay for.   What is even worse is that not every station gets the same amount from your subscription fee.  For instance, you pay $6/mo to ESPN and Fox Sports and those are the most expensive channels.  As well according to that article 40% of cable fees go to sports.  So if you don't like sports, or even as 40% of your viewing, then you're paying for a lot of what you don't want.

    Hulu Plus is a subscription system but they don't have tiers and they have most all the regular shows, so things are more level at least.

    Even better, if you buy stuff on Amazon then you are directly supporting a show.  I don't know how much ad revenue a cable show gets per viewer, but even if the show gets $1 of the $3 you pay on Amazon that has to be pretty good.

  2. You'll save money:

    See the economics section below.

  3. You aren't supporting the cable system:

    If you're reading this, let alone to this point, then you probably don't like cable system for some reason.  Not supporting something you don't like is great.

  4. You'll probably watch less:

    Part of my choice to switch was a long desire to watch less, and watch better, however this was hard with cable.  Once you turn the TV on it's hard to turn off.   You could almost consider the convenience Con above as a Pro for this reason.  The harder it is to 'just watch TV' the less you're likely to watch and the more discerning you'll probably be.

Economics:

Ok, now for the money.

My monthly Comcast bill for basic digital cable and internet was something like this

CableInternetTotal
Before$61$43$104
After0$58$58

So I saved $61 on cable but paid $15 for Internet because I didn't have a bundle anymore.  Overall I save $46 a month.

When you factor in $8/mo for Hulu Plus that leaves you with $38/mo savings.

However you then have to account for what you'll buy on Amazon.  At $3/ep, $38 buys you almost 13 episodes on Amazon a month, however it's not good to think about this on the month level because the longest shows are only only airing for less than half the year.

$38 * 12 = $456 saved a year

$456 / $3 = 152 episodes on Amazon / 22 episodes a season = 6.9 shows.

So your savings can buy you 7 seasons on amazon and you'll still break even.  It's even better because most shows don't have 22 episode seasons, especially new ones, so you'll either afford more or save more.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Selling Equity Stock vs. Options

I have a very fortunate problem.  For the first time I work for a company that gives me equity stock and options and I had no idea how to manage them.

Just recently I wanted to sell some of it to help buy a house but I ended up making the wrong decision on which was best to sell.   I imagine I'm not the only one in such a situation so I wanted to share something I learned.


The short answer is, Options are more volatile, their value to you will go up or down more than the stock will

I was basically told by a friend to always sell stock first because options only get more valuable ( assuming the stock went up in the several years before your options expired).  This didn't really make sense though, I didn't see how a share of stock was different than an option. If the price goes up $1, I get $1 more regardless of if I sell an actual share of stock or if I exercise the option.    (I'm going to assume anyone reading this is a regular employee and will do a 'sell to cover' exercise so that you just get the money right away ) 

The idea that $1 is $1 in this situation probably seems true because we're focusing more on the past growth of the stock or the current value compared to the future prospects.

So here's the simplest example I had to think of before any of this made sense.

Imagine your stock is trading at $200, and you have options with a strike price of $100 and some stock grant too.

If you need to come up with $200 by selling your equity, you have two options: Sell 1 share of stock or exercise and sell two options.   You either lose 1 share of stock or 2 options.

Now imagine the stock goes up $1.  If you sold the share of stock you just earned $2, if you sold the options you only earned $1.

It works the other way too, if it went down $1 you lost $1 from stock or $2 from option.

So options are simply more volatile, and which you sell depends on where you think your stock's price will be when you want to sell whatever you keep in the future.  If everything is going up and to the right in your view then sell the stock, if you think the economy and your stock is going to go down for several years then get rid of the options first.

Alternatively just hedge your bets

If you have no idea where your company is going you can always hedge and sell some of both so that you're balanced between the two going forward.  In this case you'd sell whatever combination such that you were left with the same number of shares of stock and options.  Your options would be worth less than the stock, but their earning power would be the same.


Or just diversify and sell it all


There's a strategy with equity that you should just sell everything and put it in a different investment because you're too invested in your company.   Your equity, salary, 401k and even your job are all based on your employer's success.  If things start to go bad for them, it's likely all of those thing will suffer.  So pull out as much as you can to diversify.

There are nasty details

you have to deal with regardless of what you sell when.  The main one of these if you have a high salary is the Alternative Minimum Tax which I'll leave you to research.  The other one is the simple tax rate.  If you just want to get cash from your Options you'll end up paying your normal tax rate on them.  However with Stock if you manage to wait a year from when it vests you could pay much less as it'll be considered Long Term Capitol Gains.